Keynote Address To Values in Education Summit
It is indeed an honour for me to keynote this important meeting, which holds such potential for being a true turning point in the way education is conceived and executed in this innovative country. As I understand it, my rose is to provide the backdrop against which your discussions this week will take place, painting in broad brush strokes the landscape against which the more specific discussions promised by the dynamic themes and scheduled formidable speakers will be set.
To start with, I recognize not only the importance of the topic, but also the implications in your choice of the title for the conference, Values in Education. The inclusion of the all important word "in" speaks volumes about your conception that indeed "values" is not just a subject to be taught, but something that is carried implicitly in all subjects, something that is conveyed as much by how we teach as by what we teach. As your own 1993 New Zealand Curriculum Framework states, "No schooling is value free. Values are mostly learned through students experience of the total environment, rather through direct instruction."
As you correctly sensed, the issue of values in education is moving higher in the agendas of educators around the globe. The Delors Commission itself emphasizes this.
"Often, without realizing it, the world has a longing, often unexpressed, for an ideal and for values that we shall term 'moral'. It thus education's noble task to encourage each and every one, acting in accordance with their traditions and convictions and paying full respect to pluralism, to lift their minds and spirits to the plane of the universal and, in some measure, to transcend themselves. It is no exaggeration on the Commission's party to say that the survival of humanity depends on it."
It strikes me as ironic how the topic of values in education is controversial to some people, and yet a necessary part of all education, how discussing it is considered bold, when it is but the logical subject that arises when one talks about full human development, how some feel it is too soon for a full debate on it when our past failures in this field tell us that it is in some ways almost too late.
There are of course a number of circumstances that bring this topic to the forefront of policy. One such circumstance is a sudden and fundamental change of Government, as a new Government casts about for a new beginning based on solid principles and premises. I happened to be in the midst of one such experience about twelve years ago, when through the well-known People Power Bloodless Revolution of 1986 in the Philippines , the despotic Marcos regime was replaced suddenly by the Cory Aquino administration. I was appointed Deputy Minister at the time. The new team at the Education Ministry soon realized that, whereas literacy levels were high and participation rates at the tertiary level were among the highest in Asia, the fatal flaw of the system was that whereas it was not wanting as a transmitter of information and skills, it had not instilled in the citizenry the values and attitudes that made for a cohesive, productive, trustworthy society. One of the first priorities of the new Minister was then the development of a values framework - still in use to this day - and the accompanying pedagogies that could most effectively transmit this. I imagine some of the research and documentation from that experience might be a useful reference points in your own efforts. An interesting parallel effort was carried out by no less than the Philippine Senate; a team of sociologists was commissioned by the Senate to study Philippine behavioral patterns as the basis for a Senate paper on a Philippine Moral Recovery Program.
A second circumstance which brings values education to the forefront is a country's perceived unrest or instability. In a multicultural society, education is perhaps the major common experience across the land that has the capacity to broaden and unify. Ethnic violence and intolerance feeds off of ignorance, and I will never forget the words of the Education Minister of Egypt , battling against a possible future of fundamentalism, when he said, "Education is a human right yes, it is for development, yes, but for us education is a matter of national security."
A third circumstance, perhaps less dramatic, is when the stakeholders themselves, the parents and the communities, speak out clearly concerning what they perceive to be a gap in their children's education. Because New Zealand has moved further along than most others in returning authority, responsibility and accountability for education away from central government and back to the communities, the voices of the stakeholders in this setting come to the fore more quickly, more clearly, and more forcefully, than in many other countries. Left to central government bureaucrats, academics, and other experts, education tends to be supply driven rather than demand driven, and to stay confined to what these specialists know best: transmitting measurable information and knowledge within the comfortable confines of familiar academic subjects.
Or a regional scale, the same phenomenon occurs. Left to the UNESCO Secretariat and its consultant experts, the last meeting of Ministers of Education of the Asia and the Pacific lined up several important concerns and items for the Ministers of deliberate on. But when the Ministers actually met, bringing with them the realities and urgencies of their actual situations, they chose to highlight only one out of the dozen or so priority items prepared for them, the education of girls, and chose another not even on the list: values education, UNESCO has since been less shy of talking about this and dealing with this subject, having overcome its original hesitation to touch upon a subject perceived as sensitive, for the same reasons some Ministries still hesitate to discuss this as forthrightly as you do.
But, as the Delors Commission reminds us, education in the twenty-first century is going to be less about accumulating and transmitting data and information and more about empowering individuals by enabling them to process all the inputs that the information age floods them with; more about full human development in the context of a interdependent and yet harmonious society. Obviously the entire arena of attitudes, values, outlooks, ethics if you will, will play a bigger and bigger role.
The information and communications revolution dramatically changes not only the amount of information readily available, but also the way it is transmitted. Whereas once upon a time, the teacher was the only source of knowledge, the wellspring of water in a desert to which the students went, nowadays, the students are not in a desert, they are in an ocean of information, and the teacher is a fellow passenger in the same boat. The teacher is no longer a source of information, but a guide, a filter and an aide to the student as he or she has to understand, choose, analyze, and integrate readily available information for use in his or her daily life.
Schools also will have to rethink their role; they will no longer have a monopoly of knowledge, and there will be so many sources of knowledge, as learning becomes more and necessary throughout life, and schooling becomes only a part of a total learning society.
Changing lifestyles, and changing perceptions of family roles also lead to need for schools and teachers to redefine their roles beyond just transmitting knowledge. Educational historians of the future who look at the Delors Report and the four pillars of education (learning to do, to know, to be, and to live together) may give this century's educators high marks for pushing back the frontiers of scientific knowledge and its applications, (to know, to do) but will probably give us low marks for the fourth pillar (to live together), as this century has seen the worst wars the world has known and no end in sight to the various ethnic conflicts that keep breaking out all the world. And if they characterize our century as that of the "information explosion," they will probably characterize the next century as that of the "values explosion" to match it. For knowledge carries values as soon as it is absorbed and used, and educators are only now awakening to the fact that this cannot be left to chance.
A major dimension of any discussion on values in education concerns the phenomenon and impact of globalization. The word itself, as our Director-General points out, has an uncomfortable echo, like colonization; are there the globalizers and then the globalized - in reality, the phenomenon is still predominantly a one-way affair. In reality, though, although globalization is an irreversible trend, how we absorb it, handle it, and factor it into our educational system is by no means predetermined. As the Delors report puts it:
"We cannot ignore the promise of globalization nor its risks, not the least of which is the risk of forgetting the unique character of individual human beings. It is for them to choose their own future and achieve their full potential within the carefully tended wealth of their traditions and their own cultures which, unless we are careful, can be endangered by contemporary developments. The tension between tradition and modernity: how is it possible to adapt to change without turning one's back on the past?"
The "traditional/modern" polarity is really a multi-dimensional one. It can be viewed on a time continuum, comparing what is old with what is new. It can be viewed on a space continuum, comparing the local values with the global values. It can be viewed on a stasis continuum, comparing what is stable and permanent with what is transitory. Each of these dimensions merits a separate discussion.
But whatever the dimensions, values education must avoid the pitfall of discussing this polarity as a zero-sum game, that choice of one aspect must be at the expense of the other.
Let me take a pertinent example: It is not a question of designing a curriculum that engenders international solidarity more and national identity less, or vice versa. Paradoxically, if handled correctly, one can actually re-inforce the other. There are ways of course of developing national pride that can deteriorate into chauvinistic jingoism and intolerance, just as there are ways of championing a version of globalization that tramples upon local and national identities. But these are not only alternatives. Throughout the world, examples abound of sub-cultures equally proud of their ethnic and sub-national origins as they are of their national citizenship. Educational systems in societies that have not achieved this have much to learn from these examples. Thinking that one must be sacrificed at the expense of the other is yet another of those classical false dilemmas that beguile educator. (Other false dilemmas that face us include the policy priority of quality versus access in basic education, on or two languages of instruction and competence, relevance versus excellence - but these go well beyond our theme today).
The ways in which values education are incorporated in various educational systems in the Asia-Pacific are as diverse and varied as the region itself is varied and diverse. In some countries, many of which are the cradles of the ancient civilizations and thought systems blending religion and philosophy of mankind, values education is inextricably linked with religious education. This is but natural, and its validity has endured through the centuries, giving individuals a frame of reference beyond the material and beyond the present tense, within a comforting socio-cultural context and a sense of social identity. It is only important that, as contexts and social identities alien to their own come in increasing contact to them, a healthy spirit of tolerance and respect for diversity matches their sense of their own social identity.
On the other hand, there are countries, many influenced by the Church-State dichotomy tradition of their former colonizers, where there is an attempt to separate out from the educational system, not just religious proselytizing, but all forms of sectarian inspired values education. The irony of course, is that it is impossible to not teach values education. Just as not to decide, so also not to deliberately engender a value system is to engender a value system that is indifferent to values, or confused about them. Ignoring or giving little importance to specific values, such as honesty and cleanliness, for example, engenders the opposite values or behaviours.
The question is how, for example, does one introduce a spiritual dimension in a public school system that is avowedly secular? Perhaps two operating guidelines may be useful:
In the first place, there is a distinction between being secular, that is, clearly not aligned with any specific religious or secretarian affiliation, and being materialistic, that is, clearly disavowing any dimension beyond the sensory. Schools that are secular are not, and should not, be necessarily materialistic. But they can stay faithful to their secular, public, and democratic character if the values they embody and engender remain firmly within the body of those values universally accepted regardless of creed, race, or religion. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, endorsed by practically all nations on earth and opposed by no major religion, is one of several starting points. Only when secular schools start to propagate a sub-set or interpretation of values particular to a specific historical religious or philosophical tradition do they betray their secular character.
The second guideline is to operationalize the distinction between teaching and preaching. The former is to enlighten, and basically addresses the mind; the latter is to inspire and motivate, and basically addresses the heart and the will. Schools are not churches or mosques; classes are not religious revival sessions. Values have a place in a programme of study, but in an educational context the emphasis is on a deeper understanding of the concepts, the implications, yes the value of these, not on the exhortation to practice them. Even in the great institutions of religious thought, there is the classical distinction between theology, which is the intellectual and rational analysis of the foundations of faith, and homiletics, which is the cultivation of the facility to persuade, move, inspire, to transform abstract faith foundations into living allegiance and devotion. Hopefully, but not necessarily, practice follows understanding; nevertheless without understanding, practice become less sustainable and reliable.
The practical question that arises is of course: what (values education) and how goes one deal with values education in a way that neither violates one's personal belief system on the one hand, nor advocates a specific configuration of such values that are not universally upheld by humankind?
An example of how the elixir of values is mixed is the area of history and sociology. In the past, there has been a tendency for these disciplines to either sanctify or demonise (usually one followed by the other) a nation's former allies or colonizers. Just as subservience to the greater world powers at the expense of generating inferiority is abhorrent, so also is trying to develop national pride at the expense of an intolerant or chauvinistic tirade of others. In one terrible example, unfortunately not from this region of Asia , elementary school books describe one adjacent country as a "good neighbour" and another adjacent country as a "bad neighbour", institutionalizing stereotypes and prejudices in the very young. Even though errors as stark as this are not that evident, there is nevertheless plenty of room for improvement in the manner in which history and sociology are treated in many countries in our region. Here again, the litmus test of the balance of traditional values versus modern values, of the national and the global can and should be applied.
Again the answers are as diverse as the region itself. But there is value in this diversity, and there is immense value in sharing and learning from this diversity for those who are only now facing the issue in this way. It is for this reason that, when the Member States of UNESCO met in Bangkok two years ago to determine UNESCO's priority education strategies for the region, and when they again underlined the crucial role of values education, the delegates formally endorsed the strengthening of the Asia-Pacific Network for International Education and Values Education, now known as APNIEVE.
In the few years since its establishment, APNIEVE now includes institutions form 17 countries and has nearly 100 individual memberships. It has already launched activities in teacher training, curriculum development, information sharing through newsletters and workshops, student and teacher exchanges and visits. In particular it is finalizing the editing of a sourcebook assembling prototype teaching materials from nine countries on the themes of peace, human rights, democracy, and sustainable development. I mention this because it is the quickest way, in my limited time, to respond to the frequent request on practical techniques and modalities of values education.
Two questions are bound to arise in the course of your discussions this week, and I would be most interested to learn how you resolve them:
Should values be taught as a separate subject? Many advocate that since values are conveyed through the regular teaching of other subjects and the running of the school, a separate period for it may be counterproductive, and compartmentalize the entire effort. In some countries, however, the subject is given a specific period during the day, and now universities and normal colleges even offer Values Education as a major or specialization in their education degree offerings.
How do we measure our success in this effort? Even if we all intuitively believe that this is an important undertaking, sooner or later, we have to account for our efforts. As in the planning of any teaching, it is important that we build in measures of evaluation so that future assessments of our efforts do not depend on instinctive feelings or anecdotal reports.
What then are the implications of all this for the teacher, for the school head, for the policy maker?
As regards values education, and ensuring the balance between the modern and the traditional, the teacher faces a particularly challenging task, quite different from his or her role as transmitter of ideas or even of skills. In the domain of ideas and information, a teacher need only be a source or a channel for these, or as I have just stated above, a guide to point to other sources or channels; being a role model in other aspects of life is not a pre-condition to being a good transmitter of knowledge. With the transmission of skills, the demands go beyond the transmission theory; the teacher should have at least an acceptable professional skill level in that which he or she teaches. With the fostering of values, the demands go even beyond that; if one does not "practice what one preaches," as they say, students are quick to pick up the sham and dismiss efforts at the values education.
This has a profound impact on redefining teacher recruitment, teacher training, and evaluation of teacher competence and performance. One anecdote regarding teacher training may prove insightful: one teacher training institution launched, several years ago, a major in values education and set about designing a curriculum on how to train teachers to teach values. When experience proved that values are not communicated through lectures and other standard pedagogies, the emptiness of the exercise became apparent, and eventually the sessions stopped being about how to teach values to children and started being about how teachers themselves could sort our and clarify their own value systems. "You cannot give what you do not have."
It has often been said that values are caught, not taught, and this correctly emphasizes the primacy of process over product in this area. Indeed, students learn less about values in classes about them, than they do in the manner the teachers reward honesty, respect differences and diversity, encourage democratic participation and group collaboration, ensure fairness and objectivity, maintain cleanliness and order.
In that sense the Principal of School Head, although not in the classroom in the same way, is as much a teacher of values as anyone else, perhaps even more so. For it is the Head of the School that sets the ethos, the atmosphere, the environment, and the value-laden practices of the school. The way in which teachers are fairly or unfairly promoted or evaluated, the collaborative relationships with the parents and the community, the order and atmosphere of the school grounds, and nature of the interactions with and among faculty, staff and students - all embody positive or negative values which profoundly effect teachers and, through them, students.
In a parallel but much larger sense, policy makers are themselves conveyors of values through the policy decisions they take. Not only administrative mechanisms such as promotions and transfer policies and their implementation, but also educational policies such as those affecting curricula, pedagogy, standards of relevance and excellence, examinations/evaluations, and credentialing, carry and indeed shape value systems.
